Queen-To-Be
by LuminaCarina
Summary: No matter what he does, she haunts his mind incessantly.


**Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter**

 **Prompts:** clandestine; bracelet; dinner date; red; ''For once I don't regret the day before it begins…''

 **Summary:** No matter what he does, she haunts his mind incessantly.

 **Words:** 1407

#

It's like a curse. He doesn't know who she is nor what she wants – if anything, he doubts she's even real. But reality's hold on him has been slipping lately, so much that he wonders at times if reality itself is truly real or merely just another veil spun over his eyes and meant to wind him up like a clockwork doll.

He closes his eyes –

''Hello? Are you there, Gellert? Oh, I know! Are we playing hide and go seek?''

She's a flower this time. He can see through Her petals, which are pale and shimmery. The Wood around her is a smudge of green, like spilt watercolours or maybe – ''Do you want to play with me?''

Where is she? She was right there –

''Found you!''

It's strange sensation, being caught by a flower. But he's a butterfly, so isn't that also a very normal thing to happen? Hmm. Wait – _no_. He tries to speak: all that leaves his mouth is a stream of bubbles, and suddenly they're underground.

She is a mole now, blind and with dark red eyes that see far too much. ''Don't you think it's rude to run away from a deathday party?'' She sounds disappointed in him.

''I should think it a perfectly normal thing to do,'' calls out a great horned Owl sitting up in the tree, and adjusts his half-moon glasses. ''Especially when it's one's own deathday party they're escaping.''

It's silly to fight back. His dream have always been remarkably lucid, and She is merely a product of an overworked mind. He decides to indulge the madness for now, just how he has decided so many times before, forgetting his recurring promise never to indulge Her again. ''Perhaps it should seem odd, but the living have no need for deathday parties.''

The Owl goes to frown, but She cuts in, Her words light on their feet. ''But why say such a cruel thing, Gellert? We are all dead here.''

He blinks, wants to answer Her that he is very much alive still, thank you so much, but –

He wakes up, gasping for breath, mouth still contorted as if to speak. He shivers. _Never again_ , he promises to himself, _he will never indulge Her insanity again_.

#

''Do you want some more tea, Gellert?''

He nods lazily. The sun is making him quite drowsy.

She pours him mulled wine out of a pretty ceramic pot, all the way to the rim of his cup. ''Drink up,'' She says, and Her teeth glimmer like starfire. ''You should drink it all so that you may grow up tall and handsome.''

The Goat bleats and thunks his head on the table. ''What would you like to be when you die?'' he asks.

Gellert thinks it over for a moment. ''A King,'' he decides after a heartbeat has passed. ''And you can be my Queen,'' he tells Her.

She giggles modestly. ''I'm afraid not, my dear. Queens mustn't walk around barefoot, and I do so hate the feeling of shoes. You should find some other Queen-To-Be.''

He frowns –

He wakes up. Gellert stumbles out of his bed on unsteady legs, and makes it all the way into the garden till he collapses. The grass is freshly cut and the scent of it heady; he breathes it in like a madman. Who knows, perhaps he truly is mad. But what possessed him to agree to a – a _dinner date_ with Her of all things!

He reaches for the phone. It beeps in his hand two, three times: ''Hello? Gellert? What are you calling me for at… four in the morning?''

''Albus,'' he gasps into the phone, gulping in air like a drowning man. '' _Albus_.''

His friend's voice grows alarmed. ''What's wrong? Gellert?''

How does he say this? _Albus, I am as mad as you thought me when we first met, and I fear I'll start frothing at the mouth before the month is dead._ No, he can't possibly say that. ''Can we meet?'' he asks instead. ''Tomorrow. At the – at the park. Please?''

''Of course,'' Albus agrees hastily. ''Anything you need.''

#

''And you dream of …this place… every night?''

''Yes,'' he says curtly.

Albus fidgets with his sleeves for a moment. ''And this woman you dream of? You don't know who she is? Her name?''

Her Name. Gellert's eyes widen – ''We are all dead here…'' – a _Name_ – ''No,'' he says. But it's a lie. Probably. It must be, because he's never thought to ask, the dreams to whimsical for such things, and – a Name. He knows Her. From Somewhere.

Or _Somewhen_.

But he can hardly tell Albus that.

His friend frowns; adjusts his half-moon glasses. ''Well, perhaps you should try some sleeping pills. I hear that the Dreamless Sleep version makes good on its name. But take care not to become dependent on it though.''

He thinks about it in a split second, and something within him rebels furiously at the thought. To rely on drugs for a good night's sleep, the way a child would rely on a lucky bracelet to aid it – it rankles him. _Why_ , he cannot tell, but it does. God help him, it _does_.

She tuts at him. ''Why would you act so cruelly to me? Have I offended you somehow?''

''No,'' he insists. ''But this isn't where I belong.''

''Oh Gellert,'' She sighs, wrapping her arms around him, all eight of them – they're in the sea, how strange – ''Should you ever dream of me, know that _I will be there_.''

His mouth opens up in scream:

He wakes up. _Never again_ , he vows, _will he take pills_. The Dreamless Sleep is chucked into the rubbish bin the second he finds the box.

#

He wears a crown on his head. The Queen-To-Be sits next to him, a swallow this time. Her wings tremble finely and not even the fluffy down can hide the movement.

The Owl says: ''The Dead do not die. But the Living do not live.''

She laughs like bluebells. ''What do you mean by that, you silly goose? Of course the Living must live.''

''I should remind you I'm an Owl,'' the Owl grumbles imperiously, spectacles glinting ominously. ''The Dead do not die,'' he repeats.

Gellert takes the Queen-To-Be's feathery hand in his own; ''My dear,'' he says. ''Perhaps you should take your shoes off.''

She laughs like this is the funniest thing she's ever heard of.

The Owl, on the other hand, watches the Queen-To-Be with a frown perched on his beak. ''You mustn't wear shoes in the Wood. It's impolite.''

Gellert thinks for a moment. There is something he must remember. The watches Her: ''What is your Name?'' he finally recalls.

All in the Wood freeze. Gellert jumps to his feet –

Wakes up.

He cries into his pillow that night. As much as he hates Her, She is what he dreams of, and every dream is what we hope for. Does that not mean that he hopes for Her? But why? He hates Her more that he loves, and he loves Her more than he hopes. And when did he come to love these clandestine meetings of theirs, so interwoven with sickness of the mind?

He knows, in his heart of hearts, that he will never meet Her again.

#

Gellert wakes up.

What silliness did he imagine is his mind under the cover of darkness – a world of reality so unreal that even the real were drowning in the ocean reality wept. No magic? What nonsense. And by what creed should Albus' sickly sister wear a crown upon her brow, and deign to tell him when to dream and when to sleep?

Still. He curls up tightly, and thinks. A kiss shared between a King and a Queen-To-Be, tasting of salt and peppers, and whisper escaping his own lips: ''For once, I don't regret the day before it begins…'' mad and insane and senseless – and in love.

What nonsense.

''The Dead do not die. The Living do not live.'' Should the Owl make any less sense, he would be Albus himself.

And yet –

And yet.

''Should you dream of me, I will be there.''

He hates Her more than he loves, and he loves more than he hopes, and still his dreams drag him down, down, down, into the abyss.

 _We are all dead here_. He shivers. Perhaps he should light a candle regardless of his pride after all.

#

 **In case I've confused you far too much, the first four drabbles we are dealing with muggle!Gellert who dreams of Ariana, Albus and Aberforth and thinks he's going crazy. In the last drabble it's the canon!Gellert who wakes up after dreaming about muggle!Gellert and** ** _his_** **dreams. Yeah. In my defence, it's 5 am and I haven't slept since about thirty hours ago.**


End file.
